Size Matters - The Impact and Relationship between Size of Government and Generalized Trust

Sammanfattning: This paper investigates the relationship between generalized trust and the size of government. Generalized trust has declined during the past 35 years globally. This matters for several reasons including that generalized trust correlates with growth, political participation and stability in society. To test this relationship, we use the World Value Survey and the European Social Survey together with the Quality of Government dataset. We run two main models using unbalanced panel data. Covering a total of 105 countries for 35 years divided into six waves. We test four hypotheses which are: